06 October 2012 10:34 PM

The sheep have stampeded - and they'll sweep Ed straight into No10

Britain’s media pundits make sheep look like rugged individualists. There’s nothing they like so much as bleating the same thing in unison – even if it’s the opposite of what they bleated last night.

This week, as if a switch had been flicked in their brains, they suddenly abandoned David Cameron, around whom they had been fawning loyally for years. And they transferred their loyalties to Edward Miliband.

It’s always more or less the same. The favoured one makes a speech and the word goes out ‘That was a great speech!’, and everyone says and writes that it was. It happened to Mr Slippery in Blackpool in October 2005.

Nobody can now remember what he said (because he didn’t say anything), but if you dared to suggest (as I did) that it wasn’t actually very good, other journalists would turn on you in impatient wrath.

The implication was that I should get with the project. ‘Can’t you see, you fool, that this is the line?’ I was duly punished, in various subtle ways, for my dissent.

I’d seen the same thing with Neil Kinnock and his over-rated attack on the tiny sect called Militant, hailed as if it were one of Churchill’s finest. I’d seen the ceaseless, abominable, shameful praising of the Blair creature and his windy, rather nasty orations.

And I’d also witnessed the moments when the sheep turned feral, rending William Hague, destroying Iain Duncan Smith, ganging up on Gordon Brown as if he had been a war criminal, rather than just another not-very-good politician.

I’d watched with interest their failed attempts to turn Edward Miliband into a second Gordon Brown. I’ve met Mr Miliband. I don’t have any time for his politics, but he’s a normally likeable human being and he was quite right to say clearly that the Iraq War was wrong. That’s why he’s leader, and his pro-war brother isn’t, as anyone who understands the Labour Party knows.

Well, smearing and mockery having failed, let’s try smarm. If the Tories couldn’t win the last Election with Gordon Brown as their opponent, how can they possibly hope to win the next one, after five years of failure, and with no Gordon to kick around?

It’s pretty obvious that Mr Miliband will be the next Prime Minister, and, in the end, our political media are power-worshippers.

That’s why a vast lake of drivel, slopping lazily backwards and forwards in the autumn winds, has been portrayed as a great speech, and why Mr Miliband will from now on find he has more and more friends he never knew he had. He shouldn’t expect it to last.

He asked for this

Mr Miliband likes to go on and on and on about how he went to a comprehensive school. He even had the nerve to say: ‘I wouldn’t be standing on this stage today without my comprehensive school education.’

Is that so? Actually, people educated in such schools are rare at the top of politics.But in any case, does he owe his all to his school? Or did his ultra-Left parents, like so many other dogmatic socialists who are ‘committed to state schooling’, hire private tutors to get him up to Oxbridge standard?

On Wednesday afternoon, I asked Mr Miliband’s office if he had received private tuition. At the time of writing, I have had no reply.

‘One Nation’ was always a fake

The slogan of the washed-up Tory wets who were happy to implement Labour policies for ever. It’s also not true. Britain is plainly several nations.

Above all, there is the gulf between those who work and save, and those who don’t work, don’t save and who live off those who do.

Then there is the gulf between those who make things that people want to buy, and those paid by the state to provide compulsory ‘services’ that are often poor, and frequently actively undesirable. Then there’s the gulf between those who are sick of mass immigration, and want it stopped – and those who actively wish to transform the country with more immigration.

It isn’t one nation. That’s why it isn’t and shouldn’t be a one-party state. But, looking at the policies of all three major parties, you could be forgiven for thinking that we do have only one party, all the uglier for having three heads.

The future of rail, locked in a dusty cell

There is no excuse left for railway privatisation. Sweeteners paid to train firms mean private rail has cost far more to run than nationalised lines ever did. All rail travellers know that it has meant higher fares, and more crowded, slower trains.

Its defenders mistake changes that would have happened anyway for the results of private ownership. BR would have banned smoking too. Higher passenger numbers are caused by rising population and road congestion in the crowded South East.

And I could do without the huge increase in apologies. As a regular rail user, I generally receive a minimum of 20 apologies a week, mostly made by computers, and none of them involving any genuine intention to behave differently in future.

Now, the costly mess of the West Coast franchise – for which we will pay – shows that the whole system is misbegotten. It’s not just that Richard Branson has been mistreated (I never thought I’d say that). It’s that the public have been mistreated. If British Rail came back from the dead, I for one would embrace it with tears in my eyes as a long-lost friend.

But wait. I have discovered that British Rail is not dead at all, but does in fact still exist, and is kept locked in a basement of the Transport Department, just in case. Let it out. Bring it back. All is forgiven.

A footnote to the laughable Channel 4 programme on ‘ecstasy’ last week.

One expert invited to take part, but for some reason not asked to speak, was Professor Derek Moore of the University of East London.

He has completed work that suggests ‘ecstasy’ may damage children in the womb. It found ‘poorer infant mental and motor development at 12 months with significant, persistent neurotoxic effects’ in those whose mothers had taken it while pregnant.

This strikes me as very important, and certainly something all young women should know.

I couldn’t stand Jimmy Savile. But at least his death has helped uncover one of the grossest pieces of hypocrisy in modern times.

Compare and contrast: two great and respected institutions do nothing about child molesting in their midst.

When the institution is the conservative Roman Catholic Church, the BBC cannot shut up about it. When the institution is the liberal, secular BBC, the Corporation mumbles feebly, and cancels its own programme on the subject. It wasn’t the children they cared about, you see.

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William ".. they apparently vote for parties which stand for the exact opposite, apparently. The question is, why do they do this?”

I think most people do not think deeply about things, or, the things they think deeply about are not the important ones. They think more about whether the airport runway will devalue the property than they do about the EU or the death penalty. They are more concerned with whether a politician called a policeman a ‘pleb’ than they are in the disbanding of our armed forces. They are more interested in whether a politician gave his wife his speeding ticket than they are in the abandonment of our energy provision through the Climate Change Act. They are more interested in a 15 year old running off with her teacher than they are in the Social Services scandals highlighted by Christopher Booker today. They are more interested in Michael Gove’s new glasses than in anything he has to say about education (see the recent DM articles and comments under the articles). Gross injustices such as Booker highlights in the social services simply do not offend them, as they do not think about them. They would, if the BBC made a documentary about them, but the BBC never will as they are not offended by the outrages carried out by the social services as they are run by the politically correct like themselves.

Those of us who think about politics assume sometimes that others also think about politics, but in my opinion most people do not. Because they never think about politics, they never go through that thought process that makes them realise that all the things they see around them that they do not want are there only because they voted for them. They simply never realise this. They do not realise it because the part of their brain that analyses what is going on in the world and then thinks ‘why’ and ‘how’ is not active. Those of use who think ‘how and ‘why’ all the time sometimes assume that others are also attempting to think about the world, but in fact they never are.

So the law abiding person on the housing estate plagued by crime does not realise that he has voted for this by putting his cross next to criminal-loving Labour for all of his life. He does not realise that he is cruelly treated and denied water by arrogant nurses chatting at the nursing station because he voted for MPs who hate the idea of a better person (the matron) being in charge able to sack the worse people (the lazy and cruel). He voted for MPs who have made sure that sacking is now in the hands of industrial tribunals staffed by haters of better types, whose mantra is ‘equality and diversity’. But he never realises any of these things. He just wore his group identity hat in the polling booth and decided that Labour represents his sub-group.

@ William .
There you go . A solution. It might be considered as a type of hysteria. But the truth is always far more simple.
We have been conditioned by the MSM and politicians to vote OUT of office ,rather than in . So the dumb society ,( it is no doubt whatever ) do as told and vote accordingly.
Any variables such as the racist BNP or the cravat wearing UKIP's are taken care of by the same MSM .
The trick is, how one breaks this cartel and its MSM followers. Not an easy task . Hitlers Germanic Armies failed. What chance Mr and Mrs Bloggs.

@ Jerry Owen .
I'd quite like to see the BBC prosecuted for these things. I think most of those now claiming they knew all along, are thinking pounds shillings and pence .As are a few law firms .
Whether it makes the PH MoS column this week or ever. The one sure thing is .The truth will be hard to find. Not that it will stop the headlong dash to get in on the act.
As for the dead . Its all a bit like dear old captain bob. Mr Maxwell . They all knew didn't they. But only after his staged death.
It doesn't excuse it .But I would hazzard a guess quite a few impressionable girls, flung themselves at these DJ's back then. Who were not that old themselves. Occasionally the DJ's might have misread the situation.
But Our Jimmy . was a peculiar chappie .no mistake . Jimm'll fix it badges, soon to be seen on E Bay.

Mark Jones writes:
***Perhaps there is some hope for a small "c" conservative revival, but, I fear, not much. The country will be bankrupt well before that happens, imo.***

As best I can tell there is really nothing like a conservative movement in Britain, or indeed, any part of Europe. Britons who are thought of as conservative would be considered left-leaning moderates in the U.S., and that indeed is the impression I've received from visiting this blog.

Perhaps you're right, William, certainly those who vote vote for the same old liberal, cultural Marxist Lib/Lab/Con. But isn't it true that voter turnout continues to decline, more and more people have, it seems to me, turned away from politics and don't vote at all, cos the 3 main parties give us the same crap. It is my impression, that these non-voters are small "c" conservative, and if they had a small "c" conservative party to vote for, who put Britain's interests above those of the EU, slashed immigration, etc., they'd vote for it. Certainly the 3 main parties have their own metropolitan urban elite agenda, which they foist on us, they don't govern "for the people, by the people". They're always banging on about democracy, even having the temerity to recommend our so-called version to other countries, when democracy is a sham here in our own backyard.

As far as I can see, UKIP have good policies, their people may not be up to much, as Mr Hitchens says.

Perhaps there is some hope for a small "c" conservative revival, but, I fear, not much. The country will be bankrupt well before that happens, imo.

Btw, i see that the "EU referendum" circus is up and running again, "Will David Cameron finally give us one? Or will Red Ed steal his thunder and promise one?". Honestly, how can anyone take it seriously anymore, just rubbish to fill newspapers with, what David Icke calls "the repeaters"!!

There's fresh 'allegations' about Savile every day now it appears. Nothing can be done about him, bit it is clear that many people new about his paedophilia.
Not only has the BBC been a hot bed of left wing revolutionaries that have done their utmost to destroy normality, order, self cotrolled morals, and monocultural cohesion. It now appears that the BBC is a hotbed of sexual depravity and perversion.
How about a little less about Savile who is having everything heaped on him because he cannot defend himself, and far more probing into the murky past and of course present of the BBC.

Mick, this country, and most Western countries, have a huge debt problem, not because of the banks (though I'm not trying to defend them) but primarily because of incontinent public spending during the New Labour years, approx £250 billion in excess of tax receipts, etc per year, for 15 years or so. Add to that unfunded future liabilities such as PFI, future public sector pension liabilities, etc and we have a recipe for disaster.

We have simply been living beyond our means for too long, and this cannot continue indefinitely. Our still relatively high standard of living is fuelled by government and personal debt. We are not a rich country anymore, as our host has remarked, we don't, for example, manufacture much anymore. Public spending will have to be brought under control sooner or later, we will probably be forced to, we will not do it voluntarily, it's just too politically difficult. The world economy basically works by China, etc lending us the money to buy the goods they manufacture. Sooner or later, they will realise we cannot pay back what we have borrowed, and will not lend us any more. Then the proverbial will really hit the fan.

Bob Son of Bob - you talk a lot of sense in my opinion. If the results of elections are to be believed, and they haven't all been jerry-mandered/fiddled in one way or another, then it would appear that turkeys really do vote for Christmas almost every time.

The masses apparently support establishment parties, sometimes to the point of giving them resounding majorities, which actively violate their cherished principles. Eg it's known that approx 2 3rds favour the death penalty, leaving the EU, an end to immigration etc yet when it comes to election time, they apparently vote for parties which stand for the exact opposite, apparently.

The question is, why do they do this? Is it stupidity? Is it conditioning/brainwashing? Is it apathy? Do only 'worse people' (sorry for borrowing your phrase) turn out to vote? Perhaps you can supply the answer (and maybe the solution)....

Come on Michael - I'm not talking about bankrupting the rich. I'm talking about them taking responsibility for the mess they created, paying their fair share and not shifting the blame and the costs to everyone else. Is that really bile compared to your portrayal of the poor? Don't worry about the rich - they'll be ok.

As Colm J rightly asks, why are so called conservatives so soft on the scrounging, parasitic banks and corporations (or the 'feral rich' as Seamus Milne calls them) yet so very hard on anyone they deem - usually incorrectly - to be a welfare scounger? I accept that middle class people are hit with a million bills but to suggest the poor are somehow in a better situation, or to blame for everything, is just a joke.

All those people out of work and we still allow unrestricted immigration, it doesn't take a genius to work out that those who will do the same job for less stand a better chance of being employed, but I'm sure there's a good reason for it though it isn't obvious to me. I see you're still spitting your bile at the 'rich' when you know as well as I do that if we bankrupted all those you consider rich it wouldn't help much and the whole thing is financed by those on 'middle incomes' as it always has been and they are also being hit by the rising cost of living and lack of pay rises whilst those on pensions are being hit by the inflation producing quantitave easing.

@ Both Mr Williamson and Mick .
You are both correct in a purely limited sense. Therefore wrong as well. You cannot write off the whole blue collar world as council tenants and feckless wastrills.
Mick, if the wealth of the world was divide up equally between every living soul . Come the passing of one year. 99.5 % would be broke the other 0.5% as rich as the 1000 you mention . They probably would be a different 1000 .but still a simplistic and probable truth.
Its humane nature .the alpha male syndrome
As it happens the sickness,
Whereas Bob son of bob talks of, has allowed the worst that society has, to prosper in that degree. rather than the best.
So today we see them offer bread and circus's in the way of unrestrained gambling and cheap supermarket booze . The latter a double whammy . In that thousands of Pubs are closing due to this cheap booze. One of Britains greatest cultural glues. That provide working men the chance of a social intercourse. that actually kept working areas ( Council Estates ) safe friendly places . not the nightmare Michael talks of.
Whereas if the better people were in charge . Like Lever and Cadbury. Building super homes ( at that time they were ) for their lifetime workers. Things might be different.
Man might expore the universe. But not today far to expensive . THe era of the bottom line.

Michael Williamson - you're wrong: billions of pounds have not been "stolen from those who actually work" - it's actually many trillions and it's been stolen by too big to jail banks, corporate welfare scroungers and the arms manufacturers, arms dealers and private mercenary companies who prosecute genocidal liberal interventionist wars in sundry parts of the planet at the taxpayers' expense. But like our supposedly conservative media you don't seem to object to this form of parasitism at all, even though it dwarfs the welfare bill in scope. I always find it nauseating to hear politicians burble Soviet style about the nobility of work, as they have been doing at the various party conferences for the last few weeks. Maybe some day they should try working instead of talking about it - many of them have never done a day's manual labour in their selves and almost all of them, on both left and right, supported the planned destruction of real productive industries throughout the western world, with the result that most of the products we now buy are made by slave labour in Communist China. In a way this is only fitting since communist apparatchiks pioneered the demagogic art of exalting work while living in luxury off the sweated labour of others. In this context it's interesting to see Ken Livingstone extolling the virtues of the banking parasites in the Guardian recently. More and more people now see that the left is the creature of the corporatist leeching nexus every bit as much as the right is, and one can only hope that articles like Ken's hasten this process of twigging the binary Coke v Pepsi scam that is modern politics.

Peter Hitchens: “Then there’s the gulf between those who are sick of mass immigration, and want it stopped – and those who actively wish to transform the country with more immigration."

This is an interesting observation because by the use of the phrase ‘actively wish’ it identifies and separates off from the rest of the population that small subsection of the population (let us say 15%) who ‘actively wish’ these things. This distinguishes them from the rest of the population who do not ‘actively wish’ these things, yet nevertheless include a large number who vote for those who do (I like mikebarnes' comment about the sheep neighbour). Although I would go further and say they do not merely ‘actively wish’ these things on this country, they want them for this country as much as they wanted an end to white rule in S.Rhodesia, which means with an intensity that is so great it is far greater than their own self interest. For example, the wealthy BBC executives know that their wealth will also collapse when the nation goes bankrupt or when we abandon our energy provision. The pro-crime judge with all his wealth and police protection knows that his children will also be assaulted and burgled by the criminals that he encourages. The university academic who campaigns for drug legalisation knows his own grandchildren will also see adverts on campus for drugs. So the Left know that they too and their children will partake in the national decline that is currently lead by the anti-British Broadcasting Corporation.

This links to a previous comment PH made: "'since the Police Federation has been prepared to stage huge off-duty marches about pay and pensions, and to barrack Home Secretaries on the same subjects I must assume that the complete absence of any such protests against political correctness, targets, centralisation, Bramshill methods and the other curses of modern policing are a sign of acquiescence to those things”

Assuming most policemen do not want these bad things, why do they not object? Why does the majority let the minority, with which they disagree strongly, get the upper hand?

Perhaps it is because the majority are not very political and are only thinking of their own pay and pensions, whereas the gene that makes someone left-wing also makes them highly political, so they dedicate their lives to their inner urges to promote the lower types in our society.

We have to admire the victory of this 15% subsection of the population in being able to become the dominant group, such that even the word ‘superior’ is now a derogatory term.

Congratulations to the genetic subsection that is persons who feel inner malice towards better persons, congratulations on their triumph, and shame on the sheep majority for letting them become the dominant group.

The question is, was their triumph due to merely certain key events and individuals on the Left, or was it inevitable and the consequence of our wealth, which allowed everyone to follow their calling?

Who rattled Michael Williamson's cage eh? Nice use of right wing cliche poured on top of myth though - but then that's all you've got. I'm talking about the low paid who work very hard, over a million of whom have lost jobs since 2008. Millions of others have had pay cuts. There are now 20+ applicants for every job vacancy according to the Telegraph and Mail (those left wing rags). But they're all lazy and feckless eh? And I'm talking about the richest 1000 people who have seen their wealth increase by £150 billion since 2008, during a recession largely of their making. That's what class war is.

But you stick to your self pitying 'it's me who pays' line. It's how the rich get away with it - divide and rule - and it's the biggest fools who fall for it..

"Class war is here and it is waged daily by the rich, with the support of 'newspapers' like this one. It didn't go away. The Right only call it class war when the poor or the working class dare to fight back.".

The politics of the council estate, the eternal whinging of the 'have-nots' who's only aspiration in life is another packet of fags and an afternoon down the bookmakers. Logically, the 'working class' would be all those employed in doing work, but that's not what you mean at all is it? What's the definition of 'poor' these days - someone who doesn't have four television sets and three cars? Billions of pounds have been stolen from those who do actually work to be squandered on your poor and working class brethren and it has done no good whatsoever. they remain in the gutter because it's less effort than taking responsibility.

Mr. Hitchens writes, 'Britain's media pundits make sheep look like rugged individualists. There's nothing they like so much as bleating the same thing in unison--even if it's the opposite of what they bleated last night.'

That might be crediting too much fecklessness to those elastic hiveminds in the media. Doesn't the whole charade seem more or less prearranged?

In February 2008, when the prospect of a recession in the UK was being debated, the Daily Telegraph published a revealing interview with former City financier David Freud – who had been appointed by Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2006 to provide an “independent” review of the so-called welfare-to-work system. In the interview Freud claimed that he thought it was possible to get “about 1.4 million back to work”. By the time the final question of the interview came around he seemed to have forgotten the need to pretend he favoured an economy with lower unemployment, and when asked whether he thought there will be a recession, he replied “Yes, because we should have recessions every five or six years and we are due one”. This was one of the rare instances of a politician publicly departing from the mantra of claiming to want an economy that will produce “jobs and growth”.

In December 1997 the minutes of the Bank of England`s Monetary Policy Committee revealed the role of unemployment. On that occasion its concern was that the long-term unemployed were not “competing” and thereby, as it put it, not exerting as much “downward pressure on earnings” as the short-term unemployed. The following paragraphs taken from those minutes demonstrate the thinking (the letter “A” before each paragraph stands for Annex):

A41 The relationship between unemployment and earnings was then considered: in particular, did short-term unemployment exert more downward pressure on earnings than long-term unemployment?

A43 Whatever the reason, the implications for the effect of long-term unemployment on wage pressure were the same: when the proportion of long-term jobless was high, for a given level of total unemployment, workers would probably realise that they could not be replaced so easily, and hence that their bargaining strength was higher.

A44 The empirical evidence in general supported a more powerful role for short-term unemployment in putting downward pressure on wages. Some studies suggested that only short-term unemployment mattered. But recent Bank research had suggested that, although short-term unemployment was more important, the potential downward effect of long-term unemployment on wages should not be disregarded.

A.Rutley wrote "Typical right wing sewage. You must be literally salivating at the prospect of cutting another 10 billion off the welfare bill.
Class war is coming"

Oh no! Slobs of the world unite....

This post is quite funny, those who live off the state by choice will be too lazy to attempt any kind of coordinated effort against people who pay for their lifestyle. Meanwhile, back in the real world, most working people think the choice on offer to these layabouts in particular (who quite amusingly often call themselves 'working class') is unacceptable and actually promotes this sad culture.

I don't really see what is 'right wing' about what Mr Hitchens says, if anything it's simply compassionate.

@ Nick Agnew.
I fear your thoughts on the Limp Dems are making them seem more, than the sum of their parts. The real shakers of our lives only spend their gold on useful idiots. The Limp Dems are idiots .but useful they aint .
Cleggs postition as Deputy PM is exactly the same subterfuge used by Blair on Prescott . To massage their vanity. For thats all they have .
A position that is not a position at all.
No, the pockets of the banksters only fill with the useful ones.

@ John Gibson
Apart from your first sentence ,everything you say is correct.
The trouble with Peter Hitchens is ,although he cares, He has not the slightest idea how those on jobseekers allowance think or how those earning less than he cannot save.
Then just like all those he castigates in government, uses sweeping inaccurate verbosity. in an attempt to garner the support be thinks is present here on his blog.
I believe this blog is a far wider church than he anticipates. Or he is plainly being lazy in his presentation.

We love in Ian era of unprecedented price increases in the cost of essentials, then cost of rents, the cost of transport, all the while seeing wage either stagnate, decrease or else work be casualised so as to reduce the living standards of millions of people in this country today. The notion of being able to save whilst working is simply a fantasy for most of us who do work; one needs to be on a salary well above the national mean average in order to do so.

Mike Barnes,yes and i think you could say that about the lib dems aswell,all 3 are owned by the banks and big business,ive often said its these organizations who are really in power,they cannot get enough of immigration that brings its cheap labour which of course results in higher profits.
when will we ever see an honest government that really serves its people?

William,I agree with you about Labour,just look at their governments of the late 60s late 70s and that shameful rabble that somehow lasted 13 years and yes because this coalition has been so poor it looks as though Labour will be in power in 2 years time,maybe with the help of the lib dems,next time i imagine it will be a happy coalition for the lib dems.
I think that Cameron and Osborne have been listening alot to Mitt Romney over the last week or so,their assault on the very poor will have no effect on tory votes as these people usually do not vote or if they do its for Labour,but floating voters will turn to labour if they keep seeing tax cuts for the well off,while at the same time they are paying more.

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